With international auto companies responsible for more than three quarters of U.S. auto manufacturing job growth from 2010 to 2015, an examination of foreign imports as a threat to national security may just backfire.

The car as Americans have known it since the days of Henry Ford is about to be transformed. That is the consensus of industry leaders. Fiat-Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne predicts that “carmakers have less than a decade to reinvent themselves.”

Sweden’s Ericsson AB will start U.S. manufacturing this year, a production shift that gets the wireless network supplier closer to customers and also may mitigate the impacts of President Donald Trump’s global trade disputes.

It's about artificial intelligence, data, and things like quantum computing and nanotechnology. Australian National University's 3A Institute is creating a new discipline to manage this revolution and its impact on humanity.

Investing in infrastructure is foundational to these efforts. Not only does infrastructure serve as a platform to support industries and broader regional growth, but it can also be a driver of more equitable and enduring growth for individuals.

Rents for warehouse space increased 7.2 percent in the second quarter compared with 2017, but that did not put a damper on demand by importers, exporters, logistics providers, and e-commerce fulfillment retailers, with absorption rising 4.9 percent, according to Cushman & Wakefield’s second-quarter industrial report.

Despite the strong labor market, wage growth has lagged economists’ expectations. In fact, despite some ups and downs over the past several decades, today’s real average wage (that is, the wage after accounting for inflation) has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago. And what wage gains there have been have mostly flowed to the highest-paid tier of workers.

Broader adoption of technology within commercial real estate often lags behind other industries. Real estate and infrastructure assets are expensive and built more for longevity and a predefined lifecycle than flexibility. To embrace change, players in CRE markets must first be convinced that the technology will be widely deployed and long lasting. But there is no doubt that long-lasting and widespread change is on the horizon with several technologies.

We don’t yet know where it will end up, but Amazon HQ2 is going to vastly change the physical, societal, and economic landscape of the chosen site. For the candidate cities, Amazon itself, and other local economic interests, the impact of HQ2 will be significant.

The least educated American workers, who took the hardest hit in the Great Recession, were also among the slowest to harvest the gains of the recovery. Now they are a striking symbol of a strong economy.

Los Angeles has had blackouts and soaring electricity prices. Electricity prices across the nation have jumped to as much as double for late summer. The Secretary of Energy is calling for subsidies to make otherwise noneconomic coal and nuclear power plants available to the grid. The taxpayers of New York have stepped up with a $500 million bailout of two nuclear power plants. Electricity markets are supposed to be competitive and “de-regulated” to provide “choice” and lower prices to consumers, but now we have the characteristics of monopoly markets: reduced service and higher prices.

US President Donald Trump’s trade wars have eclipsed the importance of foreign direct investments and its role in promoting sustainable development around the world. To achieve the SDGs, the world must free up flows of foreign investment.

Shortages may seem counterintuitive, given the widespread fear that automation, robotics and offshoring have all reduced employment in manufacturing. While jobs in absolute numbers have declined from a decade ago, the sustained economic recovery, a lack of skilled workers and the retirement of many baby boomers have led to open positions. Even though the gyrating tariff environment is causing anxiety across industries, manufacturers are still hiring.

Hardly a day goes by without the announcement of an incredible new frontier in Artificial Intelligence (AI). From fintech to edtech, what was once fantastically improbable is now a commercial reality. There is no question that big data and AI will bring about important advances in the realm of management, especially as it relates to being able to make better-informed decisions.

For decades, the district south of downtown and alongside San Francisco Bay here was known as either Rincon Hill, South Beach or South of Market. This spring, it was suddenly rebranded on Google Maps to a name few had heard: the East Cut

The world’s leading manufacturing nations spend far larger proportions of their national R&D budgets on bringing good ideas to market. South Korea, for example, spends 30 percent of its R&D budget on industrial production and technology R&D, and Germany spends 12 percent. The US spends just 0.5 percent.

While the IIoT is already boosting efficiency, productivity, and safety, the future of the IIoT could disrupt enterprise business models, too. Schmid believes that in the near future we could see the proliferation of high-value equipment—ranging from manufacturing robots to aircraft engines—being leased instead of being sold outright.

There are many statistical measures that show how productive the U.S. is. Its economy is the largest in the world and grew at a rate of 4.1 percent last quarter, its fastest pace since 2014. The unemployment rate is near the lowest mark in a half century.

What can be harder to decipher is how Americans use their land to create wealth. The 48 contiguous states alone are a 1.9 billion-acre jigsaw puzzle of cities, farms, forests and pastures that Americans use to feed themselves, power their economy and extract value for business and pleasure.

Industrial manufacturers cannot only rely on traditional machinery for revenue streams anymore. They realize that customers are increasingly seeking improved efficiency and production transparency from connected technologies and digitization – but getting there is the challenge.

last year, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which funds a range of blue-sky research efforts relevant to the US military, launched a $1.5 billion, five-year program known as the Electronics Resurgence Initiative (ERI) to support work on advances in chip technology. The agency has just unveiled the first set of research teams selected to explore unproven but potentially powerful approaches that could revolutionize US chip development and manufacturing.

Manufacturing has always been a process — raw material at one end, finished product at the other. But more and more, manufacturing is the site where many processes are converging: computer-aided design (CAD), process simulation, the actual machining processes plus machine tool monitoring and adjusting, plant and shipping logistics and much more, all made possible over the Internet, specifically the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).

Nearly 6 million highly skilled workers across the U.S. and Canada comprise the tech talent that is leading global innovation by developing the software and devices we depend on and managing the data and systems that ensure functionality of our tech ecosystems.

Automation can fill the labor gap — robots are increasingly playing a role in distribution centers, and the shift to self-driving cars could be a major factor in pushing logistics activity to rural areas — but that puts further strain on the required skill set for human laborers, and some fear one day automation could go too far and replace jobs in these tiny towns.

Americans are falling in love with the ’burbs again. The longstanding romance cooled a bit after the 2008 financial crisis, but as cash makes its way back into personal savings accounts, folks are again indulging their instinctual urge to grab their own piece of the national dream—front and back yard included, thank you very much.

Our research on logistics real estate has recently focused on the importance of consumption, including e-commerce, how location strategy has become a critical differentiator, and the reduced importance of trade as an industry driver.

GE Additive has announced the launch of its Manufacturing Partner Network (MPN), which aims to create an open, competitive marketplace that will accelerate both supply and demand for additive manufacturing (AM).

Fintechs are gaining traction in terms of headquarters locations and investments in a vast array of cities around the globe. How do financial services firms stay on top of this rapidly shifting landscape?

After years in which the consumer packaged-goods world's existential crisis prompted cost-cutting, layoffs and a talent exodus, legacy companies like Tyson and Conagra are trying to lure top-level corporate talent to guide their newfound commitment to innovation.

The state of Texas continues to gain accolades for its pro-business environment, which is sustained by its skilled workforce, low taxes, favorable regulatory environment, and deal-closing funds among other attributes.

I’ve explained why I don’t think the tariffs will help, but I also reject the pervasive argument that automation is just too powerful a job-killing force such that there’s no point in trying to help our factory sector. In fact, according to an important new paper by economist Susan N. Houseman, the argument that “labor-displacing technology,” i.e., robots/AI/etc., has killed factory employment is not supported by the data.

Manufacturing is enjoying a resurgence in the United States. After years of falling output and a diminishing percentage of the labor force, the last few years have seen renewed growth. According to PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the catalysts for this revival include factors such as the strengthening economy, workforce quality, tax policies, the regulatory environment, and transportation and energy costs.

Robots – and automation in general – have been riding a steep maturity curve in the last several years. Adoption rates are up. They’re getting smarter, doing more, and becoming more affordable. The “factory of the future” has become an established buzzword, and the rise of the robots is now conventional wisdom.

Some retailers survived the downturn by closing stores and expanding their e-commerce presence, but others weren’t as lucky. Let’s examine eleven retailers which could struggle to remain relevant this year.

Amazon’s real estate strategy was about making the value offering of eCommerce convenience and speed. Amazon was among the first eCommerce players to voluntarily pay local taxes and to actually lend support to the Main Street Fairness Act and later Marketplace Fairness Act when they were before Congress. Today it collects in every state with a sales tax. And the reality is– the marketplace has followed.

BMW AG is increasing manufacturing capacity in China in a move that will help the automaker lower its reliance on imports from a U.S. factory just as trade tensions between the two countries intensify.

The United States has always been one of the leading destinations for foreign direct investment. Our stable political climate, abundant natural resources, large workforce and trusted U.S. currency have historically been attractive for companies that are looking to establish or expand their presence in local and global economies.

The 2018 Leading Metro Locations reflect the nation’s overall economic growth as the country enjoys the second-longest economic expansion on record, with many small and mid-size metros exhibiting economic strength.